Anders Chydenius

Anders Chydenius (26 February 1729-1 February 1803) was a Finnish priest and member of the Swedish Riksdag who became a well-known Nordic classical liberal.

Biography
Anders Chydenius was born in Sotkamo, Finland, Sweden in 1729, and he studied under Pehr Kalm at the Royal Academy of Abo before becoming a Protestant priest and Enlightenment philosopher. He was elected as an ecclesiastic member of the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates in 1765-1766, in which his liberal Caps seized the majority and government and championed Sweden's first freedom of the press act, the most liberal in the world along with those of Great Britain and the United Provinces. He was vehemently opposed to the extreme interventionist policies of mercantilism preached by the previously predominant Hats for decades, and he was forced to retire after criticizing the Caps' radical deregulation policies. Following Gustav III of Sweden's 1772 coup, which meant the end of parliamentary rule for another century, he worked to increase civil liberties and economic freedom as part of Gustav's doctrine of enlightened despotism and succeeded in achieving the abolition of torture as means of interrogation, the limitation of capital punishment, and the legalization of Jewish and Catholic immigration into Sweden. However, the king's increasingly autocratic position led to Chhydenius retiring to Ostrobothnia, where he died at the age of 73..